Civil Disobedience

[Page 95]Civil disobedience is a political protest that is carried out in open defiance of legal or political authority. It necessarily involves a violation of law, such that its practitioners often anticipate that their protest will culminate in arrest and potential prosecution. The law that is violated is sometimes the focus of the protest, as was the case on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a White passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. It can alternatively be the case that uncontested laws are violated as a means of drawing attention to an unrelated set of grievances, as occurred throughout the autumn of 2014 when protesters in Hong Kong violated public order and traffic ordinances to demonstrate against the slow ...